


The Power of the Dog

by Pat_Jacquerie (Pat_Nussman)



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Episode: s04e12 Warlord, M/M, Unfinished
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-17 21:58:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15470982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pat_Nussman/pseuds/Pat_Jacquerie
Summary: Avon is captured by a warlord.





	The Power of the Dog

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Note: It's rather shocking how many in-progress stories I have, now that I'm sitting down and sifting through them. This is one I want to front-burner fairly soon, though it's in line after "Survival" (the sequel to my novella "Duty" and something I fear will be even longer). Warning: this is a BUARA (Beat Up and Rape Avon story), so besides the sex, there is some pretty nasty rape and violence. Don't say I didn't tell you about it.
> 
> This is about half of what I have written on this story.

 

_"O put not your trust in princes, nor in any child of man:_  
_for there is no help in them." --Book of Common Prayer, 1662 version_

 

There are times, Avon had told his companions not so many months ago, when even the most cynical must trust to luck. 

Not this time. Now his luck, never in any great supply, had run out to its very dregs, leaving only the certainty of defeat and a gnawing fear that he tried, without much success, to push to the back of his consciousness.

_Think of something else._

The manacles were cold and heavy on his wrists and ankles, anchoring him to the wall so that he could not move even a meter away from the rough-hewn stone. He concentrated on that relatively slight discomfort, rather than give way to the panic that threatened to suffocate him. No need for that. Death and he had been both companions and adversaries too long for him to shrink from it now.

Except, a voice chittered at the back of his mind, that it wasn't death that would come through that prison door. Not yet.

No matter. He'd faced worse than death before, on Earth, in the hands of Shrinker's colleagues. The memory sent a ripple of gooseflesh down the length of his naked body, cold enough from the dank of the underground cell. At the moment, that wasn't a memory that provided much comfort.

_Think of something else._

_Think of months of work and planning in ruins_. 

He'd been mad to consider this scheme, which depended so entirely on the trustworthy nature of his would-be allies, he who prided himself on trusting no one. And yet...what were his choices otherwise? Survival had come to depend on more sophisticated ideas than possessing the fastest ship or best weaponry. Running and shooting were ultimately only a stop-gap. Defeating the Federation was their - his - only safety. 

But was that only rationality speaking or had he been listening to echoes of Blake too long, allowing the shadows of Terminal to stalk the black corners of his mind? Had Blake, after all this time and pain, brought him to this wall, after all? 

He leaned his face wearily against the stone, letting the cold roughness brand his skin. None of his thoughts brought any comfort. But, then, he hadn't expected them to do any such thing. 

The cell door grated open and heavy footsteps echoed behind him. His senses caught the equally heavy scent of a pomade, with a musk note to it that incongruously reminded him of Anna.

But not Anna, no. Not so clean a pain as that.

By a feat of will, he kept from craning his head to see the man standing behind him. He knew who was there. No need to lose his dignity to ascertain so obvious a fact.

He'd be losing dignity - and doubtless more - soon enough. 

The footsteps halted directly behind him, well inside the boundaries of his personal space. Despite himself, his flesh shuddered away from the proximity of his captor.

A hand, warm and clammy, stroked down his back to the curve of his buttock. "I'm glad you've returned to Tarl, Avon," said the warlord.

*

To Boorva, the man before him seemed quite beautiful, armored and vulnerable at the same time, a contradiction in bare living flesh. "...So glad to you came to _me_ ," he whispered in Avon's ear.

He would set this shielded soul free...by captivity, by pain, by the sweet invasion of rape, by all the arts known to him, studied these many years. And Avon, bound up in his fortress self, would be grateful before the inevitable end game, would thank him as he died.

Avon would come to love him. All his captives did, but Avon would, most of all. 

As he loved Avon.

He'd loved him ever since he'd watched him trying to move Tarl's motley council with his measured, reasoned arguments - as if a group of random humans would ever be swayed by such a thing as logic - and knew that Avon would return, to be chained in this cell, subject to Boorva's rough wooing.

They were meant for one another. Avon knew it, as all who came to this stone chamber knew it in their hearts.

"Avon," he whispered again. He'd never felt such love.

The dark head shifted sideways against the stone wall at the sound of his voice, although the eyes remained shuttered for several long moments, as if he were denying the reality of his position...or rather wished to, but was unable to force his mind to such a blatant self-lie. 

At last, the thick lashes fluttered open, those compellingly beautiful eyes staring directly into his. "I thought you wanted an alliance, Boorva."

Oh, yes, the man possessed all the courage Boorva had ascribed to him. Not that it would avail him, not that the courage would not be shredded away very shortly. But that would be the first step to Avon's process of learning, learning to be free, learning to love him completely.

"You did a good job of appealing to my self-interest, Avon. Almost good enough. But the incentives otherwise were just too strong." He pressed against Avon's body and slid his arms around his chest, hips and growing erection against the firm buttocks, and felt the slight, not-quite-hidden shudder of revulsion.

He glanced down the length of the captive in his arms. Avon had a good body for a man his age, not precisely muscular or athletic, but honed by the active outlaw lifestyle he'd led. A man like Avon would not let the instrument of his body go lax for lack of maintenance; he liked control of his weapons too much for that. They had that much in common, perhaps, a passion for control.

But little else. For Avon was the victim and he...well, he was the ultimate winner. Avon's lover. Avon's lingering death.

Boorva studied his victim's half-averted face, which bore mottled black and purple bruising. His guards, no doubt, though they dared not go beyond blows, at least until he himself first tasted the prisoner's deeper pain. A little marking, however, was no problem and in fact only added to Avon's considerable beauty in his eyes.

Now to partake of that battered beauty.

Boorva stepped back far enough to slide his trousers down over his hips and kick them away over the stone floor. "Now, Avon. I am going to enjoy myself. And you," he leaned forward to whisper the words moistly into his lover's ear, "are not." 

*

Avon had become an expert at being elsewhere in his mind, at removing himself so thoroughly from his surroundings that he might as well be a million spacials away. The last year - years - had been unpleasant enough to polish his technique from constant practice, as he imagined himself anywhere but _Scorpio_ , anywhere but Xenon Base.

So he removed himself now. Or at least he tried. 

But it proved more difficult than he'd thought. The visceral terror of his body insisted on tugging his mind back to the reality of dreadfully impersonal hands exploring him intimately, an obscene fondling that had nothing to do with affection or, indeed, simple lust.

And worse to come, an undisciplined corner of his mind whispered. Much worse. Involuntarily, his muscles strained against his manacled confinement, attempting against all reason to find some avenue - any avenue - of escape.

But, no, reason told him. The only escape lay in the mind. He ordered his unruly limbs to still, and tried to force his mind into blank detachment. _I am not here. This is not happening. Not to me, but to some separate body, apart from myself._

It had worked, after a fashion, in a detention cell on Earth, what seemed decades ago when he waited in stolid, stubborn silence for Shrinker's eventual arrival. When he had thought of Anna rather than his own safety or his own pain.

It worked less well now.

Despite himself, he was vividly aware of the now-sweating body pressed against his back and buttocks, and his hands jerked against the restraints again, involuntarily. He had never had a man... 

Avon swallowed hard and bypassed the thought. No, it was not so much the nature of the act, not so much the inevitable pain - _oh, really?_ a part of him whispered sardonically - as the lack of choice. Only that. The lack of any control.

Control was only an illusion. A quirk of the mind. And he could always control his mind. Control it not to mind the lack of control.

_Perhaps_ , the niggling whispering voice said. _Or perhaps not._

He gasped sharply. The warlord had shifted his hips abruptly against Avon's buttocks, obviously putting himself into position. He seemed...large, but Avon admitted he wasn't accustomed to gauging anyone's relative size except his own and that only in the rare insecure moments of youth.

_Fine. Think about that. Don't think about this. Don't..._

He heard a strangled groan come from his throat, almost startling loud to his own ears. _No. This is not happening. I am not here._

Except that it was happening, and he couldn't stop it. Not in reality. Not even in his own mind. Boorva pushed into him, incredibly large, incredibly foreign. He felt he was being gutted, all his internal organs reamed out and turned in on themselves.

It was worse than he'd imagined. It was worse than he could've imagined.

Then Boorva pulled out, for a instant of blessed relief almost painful in itself. But the agony when he entered him again was the more intense for that momentary respite. Unendurable. Except that he had no choice but to...

He groaned again, the vibration scraping at his throat. Too much pain, too much pain to process. Dampness trickled down from his closed eyes unheeded, registering only a faint coolness, a contrast to the sweltering body plastered against him, driving into him like some inexhaustible demon made flesh. 

But the torment had only started a moment or two before. Hadn't it? The miasma of unreality, of timelessness, which a few minutes - hours? - before might have reassured him, now threatened to instill him with a raw panic. If he couldn't remember the beginning, he might never reach the end of this nightmare, a hell that was suddenly without borders...

_No. Not happening..._

His body slammed up against the wall, again and again, the chain rattling against the grey stone with a hollow, chinking sound, the rough surface scraping against his half-turned face, chest and hip. But that pain was nothing beside the raw sensation of the body invading his, ceaselessly moving and every movement seeming to bring pain to a new level.

In a tiny untouched corner of his mind Avon knew the pain was by no means unendurable - not half so much as he'd endured in the Central Security dungeons on Earth - and that it was this sense of violation that persuaded his senses that it otherwise. His body was no longer his own fortress, to bestow or deny as he pleased. 

And his body registered that violation as pure, unadulterated pain.

Again. _No._ And again. _No._ And again. And...

Avon heard himself screaming and there was no control left and no pride and no mental distance. Only pain and more pain, and the sense of invasion, and the hovering darkness that would not...quite...come...

*

_Oh, how lovely._

Boorva stepped back from his lover's limp form, holding out one hand for his trousers. A guard picked them from the floor and helped Boorva to dress, then backed away again, leaving him to contemplate the aftermath of his passion.

After several long moments of slackly hanging in his chains, like some loose-limbed marble stature come to only partial life, Avon moved, but toward the wall, pressed as close as his flesh would marry with the stone. He shook in small, spasmodic movements that touched Boorva to the soul with delight, as he recognized the involuntary reaction to his rape. Nothing studied here.

"Ah, Avon..." Boorva touched him again, unable to help himself, but light, soft touches now, in the aftermath of pain, caresses to Avon's throat and curve of cheekbone and soft lush dark hair. Under his caress, the compelling eyes shut even more tightly, lashes dark against pale, bruised skin and the patrician face contorted with lingering echoes of pain that were as much mental as physical.

Trying to deny reality again. But he could not. Boorva would not let him, any more than Avon's own too-perceptive mind would. His fingers wandered down the curve of the back, trailing through the film of perspiration that had sprung up on his skin like morning rain, fresh and sweet.

"I'll return to you soon, Avon," he said softly, for his ears alone. "But now, I must attend to business. You understand."

With a final caress, he turned aside. His chief advisor stood quietly beside the heavy grilled door, waiting. Boorva gestured him forward. "A problem?"

"Not necessarily." Carn bowed, a little clumsy, as always. "But your man's - " his head jerked toward Avon " - ship is still in orbit, with those two other outlaws aboard. They're bound to come after him eventually."

"I don't find two outlaws aboard an old freighter very...intimidating." He glanced sideways and caught the slight flicker of Avon's closed eyelids, symptomatic of an almost-forgotten hope. Boorva frowned. A hope which must immediately be crushed. 

Avon - his Avon - must know nothing but despair and fear and pain. And then he would know love.

A pity, really. He would've liked a session with the younger man - Tarrant, wasn't he? - but Avon's despair and Avon's pain must and would take precedence. 

"No sense taking a chance," he told Carn, just loudly enough for Avon to hear. "Send a warship up, and keep it hidden behind the third moon." When _Scorpio_ returned on its next orbit around Tarl, it would be the work of moments to destroy it utterly.

And then Boorva could bring the news of those compatriots' deaths - like a choice tidbit on a silver platter - for Avon to make his bitter feast upon. 

*

_"Deliver my soul from the sword;_

_My darling from the power of the dog." - Psalms_

 

" _Damn._ " 

Tarrant, who'd been lounging at the pilot's station, sat up suddenly and lunged for the controls.

"What?" Soolin glanced at the screen, seeing nothing but the curve of Tarl below and the bulk of the third moon on the starboard side of _Scorpio._ But nonetheless, she found her gun had automatically appeared in her hand.

For all the good _that_ would do.

"Soolin, take charge of the weapons." Under Tarrant's capable hands, _Scorpio_ was already changing course, moving out of what Soolin suddenly thought of as an all-too-predictable orbit around Tarl.

"Damn, Avon's right," Tarrant said softly, obviously echoing Soolin's thoughts. "I am a fool."

Now Soolin saw what Tarrant had apparently sensed: a huge, wedge-shaped warship moving just out of the concealing curve of the moon. It _could_ be on a joy ride, she supposed, or even on a totally innocent set of maneuvers meant to prepare the warlord's fleet for war against the Federation.

On the other hand, Soolin had come to expect the worst out of any situation and she'd not been disappointed yet.

Her expectation now was that the ship was out hunting, and that _Scorpio_ had a very large, if imaginary, target painted on its battered metal hull.

Soolin slid behind the instrument panel, her hands laid lightly upon the array of switches. She felt far more comfortable with a gun in her hand, but _Scorpio_ 's firepower would admittedly be more effective against the behemoth rounding the third moon.

Although probably not by much.

"I'm in favor of running away." Her fingers tightened over the instrument panel. "You know, in order to fight another day?"

Tarrant's lips quirked into a wry smile. "I'm familiar with theory. And I won't debate with you about the desirability of the practice." He inclined his head toward the screen. "Now, if we can just persuade our friends there to cooperate..."

"I'm all for that. Any ideas?"

"A few," Tarrant replied lightly and his fingers worked at top-speed over his controls. 

Abruptly, Soolin's stomach parted company with her midsection as _Scorpio_ dropped like the proverbial stone toward Tarl's atmosphere. "Should we be doing this?" She clutched at the instruments even more tightly to avoid falling from her seat.

"Probably not," Tarrant replied absently, "but...damn, here it comes."

Here it came, indeed.

The warship, with disconcerting swiftness, cleared the third moon and fired a burst of laser fire, visible only where it touched the edge of the atmosphere that _Scorpio_ had just reached. It just missed, but Soolin felt sure the warship had a few more rounds in reserve.

"Tarrant - "

"In a moment." The deft hands did their work again and _Scorpio_ spun away on a new course, dodging away from the incoming laser fire almost in time.

Almost.

_Scorpio_ lurched at the impact and Tarrant reached out to flick the forward screen to an exterior view of the hull. "Scorched our starboard bow," he said steadily. "And hit the stabilizers, it feels like. But we can do without...temporarily. With some skillful piloting, of course." He switched the screen back to a view of the space above Tarl and the warship arrowing toward them. Soolin thought she caught a glimmer of light against metal, as if perhaps another weapons port had opened.

Her adrenaline-fed imagination, but probably a pretty accurate picture of the facts of the matter.

"Let's get out of here," Tarrant proposed mildly.

"I thought I'd said that before."

"Yes...well, I always was a trifle slow on the uptake." 

She almost dreaded to see his fingers twist the instruments again, but alternate wasn't especially attractive, either. _Scorpio_ swerved violently onto yet another vector. Soolin's stomach had given up the fight for balance, cowering miserably in the vicinity of her throat.

Another laser stream just missed the hull, by what seemed a few meters.

"And now?" she inquired.

"And now we call upon the spirit of Dr. Plaxton. Or, at least, upon her last bequest." _Scorpio_ bounced back out of the atmosphere, on a course that would take them neither down toward Tarl or into it's sun, and Tarrant hit the control for the stardrive.

Tarl, the third moon and the warship retreated from view with startling - and gratifying - rapidity. Soolin said a silent prayer for Plaxton's soul, in whatever afterlife to which Avon and the Federation had dispatched it.

"I think it would be tactful to leave the Tarl system for a bit."

"You're the pilot." She gradually released her death grip on the thankfully unused weapon console. In a surprisingly short time - to anyone unfamiliar with the late Dr. Plaxton's masterwork - they'd passed the last planet in the system and were in open space. 

Tarrant sank back against his seat, releasing the instruments at last. Sweat glittered on his forehead, dampening the curls around his face. "Well," he said carefully, "we managed to live through that one."

Barely. And, in the process, had left something rather important behind them. Soolin's and Tarrant's eyes met, full of a grim knowledge on both sides. Double-crosses had become a way of life for the crew, so that particular twist was no great surprise.

But this double-cross appeared to have cost them Avon.

Some people would've said, no great loss, and they'd probably have been right. But, what the hell, Soolin thought, Avon happened to be the only truly unpleasant and arrogant bastard of a leader the _Scorpio_ crew possessed. 

Damned if she was going to turn over _her_ unpleasant bastard to Tarl's warlord without a fight.

*

It took Soolin about twenty minutes to put together a mission plan. But, then, she didn't know much about the target area, so the loss of time was unavoidable. She'd make it up later.

"So the women are chattel?" She bit her knuckle and frowned. That could prove to be a problem.

"Not at all." Tarrant displayed more irritation than the query could possibly have drawn and Soolin knew the cause. Her line of questioning was a clear-cut statement of intent and Tarrant didn't like it. Tarrant wanted to charge to the rescue, guns blazing, the hero of the hour.

_Life's hard, isn't it?_ She wasn't about to endanger _Scorpio_ 's only skilled pilot on a rescue mission, when she could do the job just as well, herself. In fact, she could do it much better, if she wanted to be immodest about it, which she didn't mind being in the least.

One of her earliest contracts had been to rescue a couple of terrified cartel executives from corporate rivals of a rather violently competitive nature and, if the job hadn't gone particularly smoothly, at least she and both men had come out of it alive, if not altogether unscathed. All that back when Tarrant was in the FSA. Or maybe in diapers, for all she knew.

"You were saying?" she prompted.

Tarrant scowled. "The women on Tarl are just as skilled at fighting as the men. But they live entirely apart from them, aside from..." he hesitated.

"Recreational pastimes?" Soolin suggested.

"More like reproduction. A lot of the recreation is homosexual. In fact, when I was down there, I got a few, well, offers." He shrugged. "Not my preference, but obviously it's fairly common among the upper class on Tarl, at least." 

It took a moment for that to sink in, along with the implications of the uncomfortable note in her companion's voice. "Tarrant?" She straightened up against the console on which she'd been leaning as if poked by a fully-charged electroshock stick.

"Yes, I did think of that. Boorva seemed...interested in him." Tarrant's gaze shifted to his instrument panel, as if there were something new and incredibly interesting among the familiar dials and panels. "Avon wouldn't like it."

"Now _there's_ the understatement of the millennium." She stared at the forward screen, which showed the light of Tarl's star a discreet distance away. "Would he force the issue, do you think, if Avon _is_ his prisoner?" 

"Oh, yes," Tarrant said, without hesitation. "Boorva's _exactly_ the type to force the issue."

"Avon does make interesting friends, doesn't he?" Half-consciously, she grasped a few strands of her hair, curling it around and around her fingers, an old habit not quite broken. "Still, it's a reason for keeping him alive and not turning him over to the Federation. Better screwed than dead."

"I wonder if Avon thinks so?"

They both grimaced at that, knowing exactly how Avon reacted to anything or anyone piercing his facade of total control. 

"He'll have to live with it, won't he? Or at least he will if I get there before Boorva tires of his new toy." There. She'd stated in so many words her intention. Let him argue with that, though she'd prefer him not to take the time and energy.

"Soolin, I - "

She ignored the half-formed protest. "Here's the plan: We take _Scorpio_ into the system - preferably quickly and unobtrusively - then you teleport me down and get out of the area. Way out. As in, where we are right now."

"If you're going to teleport out again, you'll need me..."

"We'll set several rendezvous times, several days apart. Let's say three. You bring _Scorpio_ in, try to contact me at five minute intervals for an hour. If you can't raise me, take _Scorpio_ out of the system again until the next pre-set time."

"What if...?"

Soolin gave him a swift glance, half of irritation, half of sympathy. Tarrant had military training _and_ experience. He knew perfectly well the answer to "what if." But it didn't fit his visions of heroes and chivalry and how a man like him should behave toward his fellow crew. _Too bad._ "Then you get the hell out and head to Xenon Base. Dayna and Vila will need a good pilot, especially if Avon's been forced to reveal the location of the base."

"Damn." Tarrant obviously hadn't gotten quite that far in his analysis of the situation. Well, it had only just occurred to her, as well, and it wasn't a particularly pleasant notion to take down to Tarl with her.

Reluctantly, Tarrant sat back down at his position, reaching for the controls. Then he glanced at Soolin again, opening his mouth as if to register one last protest.

"Forget it, Tarrant." She sank down into the seat behind the weapons console, running her hands through her hair. "I get to be the dashing heroine, this time, so resign yourself. By the way," she turned her head to glance back at the pilot, "you'd better put me down somewhere I can buy some clothes." A gesture indicated her sleek jumpsuit. "I don't think I'd fit into the warlord's court like this."

"Marketplace, that would be. All right." He set _Scorpio_ on course for the Tarl system, then looked up, a slight smile curving his lips for the first time in the last hour. "But I can't _wait_ to tell Avon you stopped on the way to rescue him...to go shopping."

**Author's Note:**

> Archivist's note: I am unsure if Pat ever finished this. If I find more, I will post it.


End file.
